The Nariokotome Homo Erectus Skeleton

Front Cover
Alan Walker, Richard E. Leakey
Harvard University Press, 1993 - Reference - 457 pages
On the slopes of the Nariokotome sand river in Kenya, sifting through sediments more than a million years old, Kamoya Kimeu uncovered a small piece of a skull. Piece followed piece--facial bones, teeth, vertebrae--and little by little paleontologists put together the most complete early hominid ever discovered, a Homo erectus skeleton christened the Nariokotome boy. This phenomenal find, a milestone in the history of paleoanthropology, is fully documented in this remarkable book. Beautifully illustrated and richly descriptive, The Nariokotome Homo erectus Skeleton takes us into the field and the laboratory, and into the far reaches of prehistory, to show us what the fossilized remains of a young boy can tell us about our beginnings.
 

Contents

INTRODUCTION
1
MICROSTRATIGRAPHY AND PALEOENVIRONMENTS
21
TAPHONOMY
40
THE FAUNAL CONTEXT
59
THE SPECIMEN
66
THE DENTITION
165
ANALYTICAL STUDIES
193
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AGE OF KNMWT 15000
217
BODY SIZE AND BODY SHAPE
261
THE THORACIC AND LUMBAR VERTEBRAE
273
THE RIB CAGE
286
Jellema Bruce Latimer and Alan Walker
294
THE VERTEBRAL CANAL
383
A MORPHOMETRIC STUDY OF FACIAL GROWTH
409
A NOTE ON ACCESSION NUMBERS
431
Copyright

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE PELVIS
227

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About the author (1993)

Alan Walker is Professor of Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. A Royal Society and MacArthur Fellow, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he and Pat Shipman won the prestigious Rhône-Poulenc Prize for The Wisdom of the Bones.

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